From the Associated Press today:

“The decision to launch on that particular moonless night in May came largely because too many American officials had been briefed on the plan. U.S. officials feared if it leaked to the press, bin Laden would disappear for another decade.”

From President Obama’s appearance on 60 Minutes on Sunday, May 8th:

KROFT: Did you have to suppress the urge to tell someone? Did you wanna tell somebody? Did you wanna tell Michelle? Did you tell Michelle?

OBAMA: You know, one of the great successes of this operation was that we were able to keep this thing secret. And it’s a testimony to how seriously everybody took this operation and the understanding that any leak could end up not only compromising the mission, but killing some of the guys that we were sending in there.

And so very few people in the White House knew. The vast majority of my most senior aides did not know that we were doing this. And, you know, there were times where you wanted to go around and talk this through with some more folks. And that just wasn’t an option.

Last Sunday, as the final preparations for the raid were underway, President Obama continued with his charade of “business as usual.” Most people in the White House, including some of his closest aides, had no idea what was about to happen. To break the tension and to clear his head, he played some golf in the morning, waiting for the sun to go down in Pakistan.

Then he returned to the White House for the most critical 40 minutes of his presidency. In mid-afternoon, he gathered the architects of the mission in a windowless room in the White House basement to watch it all unfold.

So which is it? Did the mission get pushed up because too many people knew? Or did the administration demonstrate great skill and success keeping it under wraps, with just a few key people knowing about it at all?

We can guess which story is more likely to be true based on the fact that the AP story is based accounts from “officials [who] spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a classified operation.” The AP doesn’t make clear who these “officials” are – they could be at the White House, in Congress, at the Pentagon, the CIA… “classified” is evidently defined by some as “you can talk about it all you want, just don’t put your name on it.”

Newt Gingrich appeared on Meet the Press this morning, and on a few points it sounded a bit like he’s running in the Democratic Party primary.

Gingrich came out opposed to the Republican plan to reform Medicare, instead essentially signing on for the Democrats’ call to wring some waste and fraud out of the current system. He also handed the Democrats an easy talking point: “Even Newt Gingrich thinks the Republican agenda to destroy Medicare and kill seniors is radical and extreme!”

He also came out in favor of an individual federal mandate to buy health insurance. He tried to distinguish his mandate from the Obama mandate, but with little success.

Sandbagging your fellow Republicans in congress and offering tacit support for a key (unconstitutional) component of Obamacare is a very strange way to begin a run in a Republican primary. Not a strong start.

In a better moment, Gingrich responded with appropriate indignation when MTP host David Gregory made a ridiculous charge (he likely just read it on some lefty blog somewhere) of “coded” racism, regarding Gingrich’s reference to Obama as the “food stamp president”.

MR. GREGORY: First of all, you gave a speech in Georgia with language a lot of people think could be coded racially-tinged language, calling the president, the first black president, a food stamp president.

REP. GINGRICH: Oh, come on, David.

MR. GREGORY: What did you mean? What was the point?

REP. GINGRICH: That’s, that’s bizarre. That–this kind of automatic reference to racism, this is the president of the United States. The president of the United States has to be held accountable. Now, the idea that–and what I said is factually true. Forty-seven million Americans are on food stamps. One out of every six Americans is on food stamps. And to hide behind the charge of racism? I have–I have never said anything about President Obama which is racist.

Many on the left see the racist bogeyman in any criticism of the president, or cynically and maliciously try to score political points with the charge. Good for Newt for fighting back and knocking down the insinuation.

UPDATE(via Hot Air): A spokesman for Rep. Paul Ryan responds to the hit on his Medicare reform proposal:

“The solutions offered by Chairman Ryan and advanced by House Republicans make no changes to Medicare for those in and near retirement, while offering a strengthened, personalized program that future generations can count on when they retire,” Sweeney says. “Far from claims of radicalism, the gradual, common-sense Medicare reforms ensure that no senior will be forced to reorganize their lives because of government’s mistakes. The most ‘radical’ course of action on Medicare is continue to cling to the unsustainable status quo.”

“Serious leaders,” he adds, without naming names, “owe seniors specific solutions to avert Medicare’s looming collapse.”

Via memeorandum, we noticed this hilarious/pathetic post on Alan Colmes’ website:

The Right’s Hypocrisy About Rap Music and Common

The right wing, desperate to find reasons to attack President Obama, has been going crazy because the rapper Common appeared at a White House poetry event.

Conservative critics are blasting tonight’s White House poetry event for including a rapper named Common, whose lyrics have blasted former President George W. Bush — “burn Bush” — and celebrated a former Black Panther convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper.

The New Jersey state police union is protesting is protesting Common’s appearance at poetry, as is 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

….

Of course one can’t expect Sarah Palin, and many white conservatives, to understand how rap music gives voice to a population that is often mistreated by authorities.

And the right has a short memory, conveniently forgetting their own associations which don’t seem to trouble them. Eazy-E of NWA, famous for the song “F…Tha Police”, attended an invitation-only lunch with the first president Bush in 1991 ….

The utter stupidity of the post is hard to overstate. First, how in the world is it “hypocrisy” (perhaps the most overused and misused word in the left-wing lexicon) for any conservative in 2011 to criticize this current event, because President Bush had lunch with some other rapper in the early 1990s? That’s just absurd. (Colmes is one of many on the left who considered it out of bounds to bring up Obama’s decades-long, close association with his racist pastor, Jeremiah Wright. But Sarah Palin, indeed all conservatives, are responsible for who Bush had lunch with in 1991? Talk about hypocrisy.)

Second, how would any sane person characterize the New Jersey state police union as “the right wing”? Of course this is a rhetorical question.

Third, how about that condescending, even somewhat racist, dig “Of course one can’t expect Sarah Palin, and many white conservatives, to understand…”? Of Course! Who among us could possibly understand the mean streets of the inner city like Alan Colmes does! Nice touch Homes, I mean Colmes!

Finally, American society really is in sad shape if it’s really considered “right wing” to oppose the celebration of someone who murdered a police officer. Fortunately, we don’t think Alan Colmes has that much influence.

On the Bloomberg website today, they seem to have put this editorial in the “News” section by mistake. It begins with a misleading assertion in the headline:

Boehner Builds Economic Case on Assertions at Odds With Markets, Studies

House Speaker John Boehner, giving Wall Street leaders his prescriptions for growing the U.S. economy and reducing the nation’s debt, built his case on several assertions that are contradicted by market indicators and government reports.

….

Sounds bad. Sounds like Boehner is just making stuff up, with disregard for undisputed facts.

But wait:

Boehner’s statement in his Wall Street speech that government spending “is crowding out private investment and threatening the availability of capital” runs counter to the behavior of credit markets.

“Look at interest rates. Look at capital spending,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist of IHS Inc., a research firm based in Englewood, Colorado. “It’s very hard to come to a conclusion that there’s any kind of crowding out.”

….

Still, some economists, including former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan and Stanford University Professor John B. Taylor, a Treasury undersecretary in Republican President George W. Bush’s administration, have argued that the deficits have been crowding out private investment.

Greenspan said the deficit is one reason that corporate investment as a share of profits is lower than historical patterns, in an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Dec. 3, 2010.

“Approximately one-third of the decline in capital investment as a share of cash flow is directly attributable to” the “crowding out by U.S. Treasury borrowing,” Greenspan said in the interview.

….

Boehner also repeated familiar Republican political criticisms that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government mortgage companies, “triggered the whole meltdown” of the U.S. financial system.

That differs from the conclusions earlier this year of the Democratic majority on the congressionally appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. It reported that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “participated in the expansion of subprime and other risky mortgages, but they followed rather than led Wall Street and other lenders in the rush for fool’s gold.”

Three of the panel’s four Republicans, while faulting Fannie and Freddie, didn’t place the blame squarely on the two mortgage giants.

“They were part of the securitization process that lowered mortgage credit quality standards,” said a dissenting report by Keith Hennessey, Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Bill Thomas, former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. In a Wall Street Journal essay, the three said laying primary blame on government intervention is “misleading” and cited 10 reasons, taken together, for the crisis.

Only Peter Wallison, the other Republican commissioner, offered support for Boehner’s view that Fannie and Freddie caused the mortgage bubble and subsequent collapse. Wallison’s dissent put most of the blame on government housing policies that encouraged Fannie and Freddie to buy more subprime mortgages to promote home ownership among low-income people.

….

So “Boehner Builds Economic Case on Assertions at Odds With Markets, Studies” should really read something like, “Boehner Builds Economic Case on Assertions at Odds With Some Economists, and Many Democrats”.

They can call their Op-Ed anything they want, they shouldn’t call it a news story.

Via Pajamas Media, here’s another example of the Democratic Party base openly cavorting with communist groups.

And no, this isn’t guilt by association, it is actual association.

We noted a similar coalition of Democrats and communists back in 2006. This sort of thing is nothing new, the DeMSM has been ignoring these associations for a long, long time. But of course, if there’s one guy in a sea of thousands at a Tea Party rally with an unfortunate sign, DeMSM cameras are rolling.